First Department Unanimously Affirms Decision Rejecting Attempt to Disqualify Civil-Rights Attorney Eric Sanders

Appellate Division Rejects Effort to Remove Sanders From Separate Discrimination Case, Finding No Substantial Relationship, No Significantly Harmful Information, and Waiver of Publicly Filed Privilege Claims.

New York, New York — June 17, 2026 — The Appellate Division, First Department has unanimously affirmed a New York County Supreme Court order denying an effort to disqualify civil-rights attorney Eric Sanders from representing a client in a separate employment-discrimination and retaliation matter.

The decision, issued in Vladimir Ravich v. City of New York, et al., Index No. 161574/2025, Case No. 2025-08005, affirmed the December 17, 2025 order of Justice Carol Sharpe, which denied plaintiff’s motion to disqualify Sanders from representing defendant Winston Faison in another matter and to enjoin defendants from using information plaintiff claimed he had provided to Sanders.

The First Department rejected the disqualification effort in full.

The appellate court held that the motion court “providently exercised its discretion” in declining to disqualify Sanders from representing Faison in a separate, unrelated matter. The Court found that plaintiff failed to meet the “heavy burden” required under Rule 1.18 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, which governs duties owed to prospective clients.

The ruling is significant because disqualification is an extraordinary remedy. It interferes with a client’s choice of counsel, disrupts litigation, and can be misused as a tactical weapon. Courts therefore require more than suspicion, discomfort, or generalized claims of prior contact. A party seeking to disqualify counsel based upon a prospective-client consultation must satisfy a demanding legal standard. The movant must show, among other things, that the matters are substantially related and that the information allegedly conveyed could be significantly harmful in the matter where disqualification is sought.

The First Department held that plaintiff did not make that showing.

According to the decision, plaintiff consulted Sanders as a prospective client concerning plaintiff’s own race and disability discrimination and retaliation claims against defendants. Sanders later represented Faison in a separate matter concerning Faison’s own discrimination and retaliation claims. Sanders and Faison submitted affidavits stating that the Faison matter was unrelated to plaintiff and that Sanders did not share confidential information obtained from plaintiff with Faison.

The First Department found plaintiff failed to demonstrate that Faison’s personal discrimination matter was “substantially related” to plaintiff’s prior consultation with Sanders. The Court also found that plaintiff failed to demonstrate that any “conveyed information” had “the potential to be significantly harmful” to plaintiff in the matter from which he sought disqualification.

That finding defeated the central premise of the motion.

“This was a complete appellate rejection of the disqualification theory,” said Eric Sanders, owner and president of The Sanders Firm, P.C. “The First Department confirmed what we maintained from the beginning: the Faison matter is separate, unrelated, and not a basis for disqualification. The Court required proof, not speculation, and the required showing was not made.”

The First Department also addressed plaintiff’s claim that certain communications were protected by attorney-client privilege. The Court held that, to the extent plaintiff disputed defendants’ right to use information contained in emails as a matter of attorney-client privilege, plaintiff waived the privilege by filing those emails on the public docket.

That portion of the decision is particularly important. The ruling makes clear that a litigant cannot publicly file allegedly privileged communications and then continue to treat those same materials as protected from use merely because the party later regrets the filing decision. Public filing carries consequences.

The Court further noted that plaintiff had submitted email attachments to the motion court for in camera review. To the extent plaintiff challenged the court’s disclosure of those attachments to the City, the First Department observed that the motion court had since directed the City not to use the attachments, except for information obtained from a source other than those documents. Plaintiff did not appeal that order and did not dispute that defendants were entitled to use independently obtained information.

The First Department closed its decision by stating that it had considered plaintiff’s additional arguments and found them unavailing.

“This decision matters beyond this one motion,” Sanders said. “Disqualification motions should not be deployed to interfere with unrelated civil-rights litigation, burden counsel, or chill advocacy. The First Department reaffirmed that the rule has a standard, and that standard requires a concrete showing. A prior consultation alone is not enough. A generalized accusation is not enough. A tactical effort to interrupt representation is not enough.”

The ruling preserves Sanders’s ability to continue representing Winston Faison in his separate discrimination and retaliation matter.

For civil-rights litigants, the decision reinforces the principle that access to chosen counsel should not be disturbed absent a legally sufficient showing. For lawyers, it reaffirms the boundaries of Rule 1.18 and the heavy burden imposed upon a party seeking to disqualify counsel based upon prospective-client communications. For litigants, it underscores the risks of publicly filing materials later claimed to be privileged.

The decision also protects the integrity of separate discrimination claims from collateral litigation tactics. Employment-discrimination and retaliation cases often involve overlapping institutions, recurring municipal actors, and similar types of claims. But similarity in the general subject area is not the same as a substantial relationship between two matters. The First Department’s ruling recognizes that distinction.

“This is an important result for the client, the firm, and the broader principle that civil-rights cases should be decided on their merits, not derailed by unsupported disqualification attacks,” Sanders said. “The appellate court’s ruling is clear: no substantial relationship, no significantly harmful information, waiver as to publicly filed emails, and no basis to disturb the representation.”

The decision was entered on June 16, 2026.

About The Sanders Firm, P.C.

The Sanders Firm, P.C. is a New York-based law firm focused on civil rights, immigration, employment discrimination, police misconduct, and other high-stakes matters. Its founder and president, Eric Sanders, Esq., is a retired NYPD officer who brings a rare inside perspective to the intersection of government power, public institutions, enforcement discretion, and constitutional accountability.

For more than twenty years, Sanders has counseled thousands of clients and handled complex matters involving police use of force, sexual harassment, retaliation, systemic discrimination, immigration consequences, and related civil-rights violations. He is widely recognized as a leading New York civil-rights attorney and a prominent voice on evidence-based policing, institutional accountability, equal justice, and rights-based immigration advocacy.

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